Times Square

Progress pics of the New York spread. Curiosity's landing was streamed all over the world. I watched it on the internet in my pajamas at about 5 am UK time, while others got to watch on a slightly bigger screen. Watching the NASA team confirm touchdown and celebrate, hugging and high fiving, still gives me goosebumps , you can see the years of hard work pay off in an instant. Some spreads in the book didn't need filling , with the vastness of of space stretching from edge to edge . This page however was the chance to see how much I could fit in. Theres even an easter egg or two, such as my nieces watching from the sidewalk.

Cali

Ho ho ho

Our Etsy shop sure is looking a little fuller these days, what with my cards for this year now up, plus the hand made decorations Charlie has been working away on busily. See for yourself at our ridiculously Chrtistmassy looking shop.

Editorial stuffs

So I decided to set myself a project to practice illustrating to a tight deadline, much like artists working on newspapers etc no doubt have to keep to. I picked an advice column out from a weekend broadsheet and set about coming up with a drawing per week, which would go alongside the letters.

First up, this lady had written in because she was worried her 18yr daughter was seeing a 28yr old muscian but wasn't being honest about it, and the mum suspected he was exposing her to drugs. The daughter is off to a charity gig next month and the mum has just found out the musican is playing there, and is worried sick about what kinds of debauchery could happen!

Next up was quite a sad letter, written in by a 14 yr old. His gran had died a few weeks back, and this kids mum was devastated, the kid writes his mum cries all the time and there seems to be nothing he or his dad can do to cheer her up. I tried to get across this inconsolableness by making his mum so much larger then him, his arm not being big enough to put on her shoulder and comfort her.

Last one so far is about a guy who cheated at a vegetable competition in a village flower show. He used disallowed fertiliser on his onions and went on to win the competition  After winning, he was made president of the show for next year. He is racked with guilt and doesn't know whether to confess and bring shame to his family (who would be made guilty by association, his father and grand father were all presidents of this show) or keep quiet and remain president, which means so much to him.

Illustrating this is a nice challenge, as the pictures have to work immediately, and will no doubt be seen before the letters are read by readers, so have to clearly give some insight into the story.

Decided to upload a few close up's of the illustrations as they appear in my final major project from this year. Can't wait to get stuck into my next book, which is currently in the planning process now.

Not my gumdrop buttons!

I became an uncle earlier this year and wanted to create something for my twin nieces nursery. It wasn't the strictest brief I've ever worked to, I think whatever looked good would have sufficed (I wasn't expecting my new born nieces to be my harshest art critics) but their mom Erin suggested a theme of favourite nursery tales which helped me zero in on an idea.
One of the first and only tales which sprung to mind (my memory is quite foggy about that period in my life, its going back a few years now) was the gingerbread man. I decided that two pictures, canvas mounted, would look better then one, and could position the gingerbread man on his own, with some of the animals which chased the poor guy on a second picture. With this being the result!

Tumblr Portfolio

I'm  using my Tumblr page to act as a portfolio until my inevitable .com website goes up. It has the same work you can find on this blog, albeit in a format which allows more immediate access to images, and features far less waffling, so its win win.

http://markusmotum.tumblr.com/

More sketching

There is a very fine line between something looking cute and something looking terrifying, hopefully these guys tread on the right side of that line. These were my first forays into drawing stuff for a (much) younger audience.